Friday, May 31, 2013

Decades ago I saw ‘Guide’ the film adaptation of
R.K.Narayan’s book of the same name. Though there was some controversy
regarding the adaptation in general, the film was well made with some of the
most memorable songs and a highpoint in Dev Anand’s acting. Since this is not a
critique of the movie itself, I am restricting myself to the character of the
protagonist Raju. A fascinating transformation of a travel guide, a glib
talker, a hopeless romantic, being sent to jail in a case of forgery and
ultimately ending up as a spiritual person who is venerated as a saint by the
villagers, where he had taken refuge. All this much against his own natural
inclination, the mantel was thrust upon him and he flowed in with the tide that
ultimately engulfs him. Though he had the option to get away from all this,
something makes him stay back, the belief of the villagers and his own
realisation of a spiritual self. He says that these people have faith in him
and he has faith in their faith, though he knows that there is no connection
between rain and the fast he had undertaken initially due to the intense
pressure on him by the villager’s faith but later of his own volition. He had
at last found for himself a way to transcend and wash away his previous
failings as a human being and find an authenticity in the conduct of his life.
He had found the meaning of life. He did not work miracles as the people around
him believed, he was just an ordinary human being but in death he was a man
fulfilled. And as the rains come Raju passes away leaving his mortal remains.
That is how the movie ends. He had indeed become a saint. A reluctant saint for
if he had been left to himself, his life could have taken a different course. In
Raju’s own words in the book, he says “I am doing what I have to do; that is
all. My likes and dislikes, do not count” indicating, a complete erasing of the
ego. On the eleventh day he collapses after saying that it has started raining
in the hills. He dies a spiritually liberated man, the epitome of a Karma yogi.

You may say that this is a work of fiction. Yes it is, but haven’t we at
some stage been pushed in to something that is not as per our natural
inclination and which subsequently has been life changing? In Raju’s case it
was the awakening of his conscience by the persistent faith of the villagers,
his realisation that there is something which afforded him a deeper meaning to
his life and an authentic existence. As Joseph Knecht says in Hermann Hesse’s
‘The Glass Bead Game’ “My awakening has a similar kind of intensified reality
for me. That is why I have given it this name; at such times I really feel as
if I had lain asleep or half asleep for a long time, but am now awake and clear
headed and receptive in a way I never am ordinarily”.

Last night in my
dreams I saw the naked man once again, tall, dark, a well formed body, white
curly hair on his head and a flowing curly white beard. He looked like
Michaelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in St. Peters
in the Vatican,
a black Moses and he seemed to be saying something to me. As a child, I have
seen him walking on the streets, on the main roads, totally oblivious of the
curious onlookers including me. I was told that he was a mad man. Now I can correlate
what Nietzsche says in ‘Thus Spake Zarathrushtra’ – “For what is a naked man
among clothed men but a mad man”. I was frightened and so were the other
children though we used to make fun of him.
He used to mutter to himself as he walked but sometimes there would be persons
following him with a packet of sweets or fruits entreating him to eat them but
he would wave them away. I asked my mother and she explained to me that it was
their belief that if he partook of what they gave him it would result in some
benefit or the other accruing to them. I asked whether he was a saint with some
strange powers and she said that some believed so. Sometimes I have seen him
sitting quietly in a corner and talking to himself. He was a curious object for
me at that stage of my life. He was a saint to the believers but a mad man to
others.

Now as that
image flashes across my mind I am able to understand. He was in a different
plane of existence, totally stripped, literally, of all the normal human
desires and emotions though continuing to live amongst us only as a body though
he himself was elsewhere. What is it that pushes a person to that state of
total detachment of body and mind? But why is it that I now remember him though
he was only an incident somewhere far away in my childhood? What is he trying
to tell me in my dreams now?

When I talk of
saints here I am not talking of miracle men, I am talking about persons who
have made a difference in the lives of people around them, given them hope. Who
can deny the relevance of Ramana Maharishi or a Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a
Shirdi Sai Baba who have lived beyond their mortal life to continue to give solace
and hope to multitudes. They showed us the path of compassion and humanity.
Swami Vivekanand, who through the conduct of his life spread the message of
humanity and the need to lead a moral life. There were many such people in this
country even till the middle of the last century. But at the core of their
being was a religion they followed and a supreme power they believed in, call
it whatever name you will. These were not men who donned a mantel for the
enhancement of their selfish means for they had transcended all that was
egoistic and found a merger with the absolute. All of them have lived beyond
their death and left no dynasty.

With the
continued growth of a materialistic society our demands and needs have
increased and we look out for quick fix solutions to attain them. Our greed has
over taken and eroded our basic humanity. It is this that has contributed to
the proliferation of Godmen who promise to deliver the goods and lead you to
salvation with their own selfish agenda in mind. All this is done in the name
of religion. Religion has nothing do with any of this. It is we ourselves who
are to blame for the erosion of values in our present existence. It is religion
that has given us a code for the conduct of our lives, which sadly seems to
have been pushed to the background or misinterpreted.

Some attain
sainthood during the course of their lives when pushed on to search for truth
and the true meaning of existence like the Buddha, some have sainthood thrust
upon them and in the process achieve a state of realisation like Raju and many
make themselves saints like the present day godmen who thrive on peoples
gullibility. Some others like the naked man, who seem totally oblivious of
their physical selves will be dubbed as mad men. It is for you to choose.

Monday, May 20, 2013

‘Religion
is the opium of the people’ a quotation by Karl Marx has often been used by the
more intelligent and morally authoritative amongst us when we want to denigrate
that section of the population in whose lives God and religion play a prominent
part of their sustenance. We attribute blind faith, superstition and casteism
as being major factors contributing to all the ills in society. But let us look
closely at the full quote of Karl Marx- ‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
It is the opium of the people’.

While
casteism is deplorable the way it has been practised over the centuries where a
clear demarcation has been made between a superior class and an inferior class
of humans which in turn has resulted in exploitation and hatred amongst us, it
was never intended to be so. We are all born as humans and in that sense born
equals. But we cannot escape the fact that we do not choose the surroundings in
which we were born, we have no role in choosing our parents and we are born
with constraints with respect to our physical attributes and mental abilities.
So does everyone have equal opportunities? The answer is no. The strong have always
dominated the weak whether by their physical or mental superiority.

The
division into classes is not peculiar to any one religion, whether it be in the
Upanishads or Plato’s The Republic’. They all have looked at fitting people
into society as per their abilities. In that sense we may understand it better
when we relate it to our own present existence, not everyone can be a boss.
Imagine the chaos that it would create if that were the case. Promotions,
entrance exams etc don’t they create a class distinction? You will agree that
it cannot be otherwise. Having created an upper income, middle income and lower
income groups do we find it easy to mingle among ourselves? How often have we
invited a person who is starving, inside our house and fed him? Maybe we shall
give him some money and ask him to have some food elsewhere. His presence is
not desirable inside our homes. They are the under privileged and how has this
happened, we may only say ‘God knows!’.

Why
this vast disparity which ranges from the billionaires who have created empires
and reside in their affluence to the manual scavenger whose life depends on
cleaning up the excretions of the more privileged amongst us? Though we have
moved forward in eliminating this type of demeaning existence, the class
differences are bound to exist. They can be never eliminated. We can only
become more humane in our approach to our fellow beings. Why blame religion?
Aren’t we ourselves to blame? While we
can intellectualise and blame God and religion for the injustices being
perpetrated on our fellow beings, how many of us will be really able to
sacrifice the comforts that we enjoy now? It is man’s innate nature to dominate
and to achieve that he will not hesitate to distort what otherwise could have
been a good intention. That is what history is all about.

Let
us once again look at what Marx said – “the heart of a heartless world and the
soul of a soulless world”. Anguish of the human condition has been the cause
for a leap of faith to God as Kierkegaard would say. It was anguish that forced
Siddhartha to move away from all the worldly pleasures that he was used to and
seek the meaning of life and the way to deliverance. When finally realisation
dawned on him he became the ‘Buddha or the enlightened one’. It was the fear of
death that drove Venkataraman away from his home at the tender age of sixteen
to seek the truth and he became Ramana Maharishi. History is replete with such
examples of seekers of truth and deliverance and who came to be regarded as
saints. It was when Buddha chose to spread the message of the path to self
realisation through his disciples that Buddhism was born. Such people have
appeared at various stages in the history of mankind to reiterate that
deliverance is possible from the miseries of the human condition. Not everyone
is a Buddha.

The
man on the street does not understand nor is he bothered as to what seeking the
truth or deliverance means. He is only looking at something that will ease the
miseries that he faces in his day to day living, something that gives him hope
for a better tomorrow or will sooth his immediate pains. Try explaining to him
that you can find God within one self or God is an abstract concept, he is not
interested. For him God is the idol in the temple, worship of which will give
him the benefits he seeks or the solace that has been eluding him. So why deny
him his faith as being blind. Religion affords him that solace, that sense of
hope and belonging. That is where, what Marx said has so much relevance.

While
talking about the origin of religious beliefs Hume says that it is the fear of
death accompanied by man’s desire for immortality and fear of the many forms of
human misfortune that has given rise to belief in God. He says that the roots
of religion are in human feelings. There is no dispute regarding this, but for
Hume, being the empiricist that he was, believed that our ideas reach no
further than our experiences and we have no experience of divine attributes.
His views that there is nothing beyond sense perception was in direct contrast
to the rationalistic view of Descartes for whom it was through reason alone
that one experiences and understands the world. Both views found a synthesis in
Kant’s ‘priori and a priori – knowledge gained through sense experience combined
with the innate ideas in ourselves that give rise to a complete understanding
of the world of things- ‘the world as I see it and the world as it is.’

One
may accept or reject the idea of a God as being responsible for the creation of
a world which we are still trying to understand, but I guess both are plagued
by the idea of termination and a quest for the meaning of life.

I
recollect my observations on my walks along the roads and streets of this city.
I have invariably found that there is always a crowd of people in front of the
government run liquor shops. There you find the wretched and the miserable
waiting for their turn at the counter to get their supply of liquor, most of
them belonging to what we refer to as the lower strata of society, spending
their hard earned money in a bid to remain on a perpetual high, to escape the
realities of their present state of existence. They end up destroying their
families apart from themselves. The state runs these shops because this is the
highest income generating activity for them. In an indirect way they have
contributed to the destruction of families. I have asked people why the
government has not taken initiatives to curb the sale of liquor especially
through such shops. The feedback I get is that apart from the revenue part of
the entire issue, is the fact that the minute you shut down these shops there
will be mass suicides as the addiction has become so acute. In trying to
understand the problem I have also tried to analyse the behaviour patterns of these
people. These are people who are out in the blistering sun the whole day long
doing heavy manual labour, scavengers etc, who at the end of the day overcome
by the hardships of their existence resort to a balm to soothe their aching
joints and to comfort their ailing minds. What starts off as an escape from the
harsh realities ends up as a severe addiction which destroys them.

Why
I digressed from my main theme is to reiterate the fact that religion is opium
that soothes and does not destroy. I have seen multitudes at the temples, there
is one next to my house which is more than a thousand years old, who come there
with a prayer on their lips and hope on their faces. They perform the rituals
in a diligent manner and seek to transfer the burden of their everyday living
on a God who they believe will take care of them. They go back to their homes
with a renewed strength to face their problems. Here families coalesce and are
not shattered. It is here that religion plays its part.

Marx’s
statement does not mean that he endorses the concept of religion but what he
said reflects the reality of the human condition. He refers to the human as an
oppressed creature in a heartless world and in a soulless condition. You could
say that this condition is what he wanted to demolish. For him the division of
labour into specialized jobs has dehumanizing and evil results. He says “For as
soon as labour is distributed, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of
activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a
hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he
does not want to lose his means of livelihood. The division of labour chains
everyone for life to their respective confining activities.” Marxism is a fundamentally materialist
philosophy which assigns the task of knowing all truth to science. Matter is
accepted as the beginning and ending of all reality. Marx calls communism as
‘positive humanism’. In his view the state, the family, law, religion, morality
– all these institutions are forms of human slavery to the money- God of
capitalism. So communism calls for a total revolt against the human condition
to restore equality and removal of class distinctions. Philosophy had to stop
interpreting the world in endless metaphysical debates, in order to start
"changing" the world. So we can see where one stands with respect to
God and religion where Marx is concerned. Marxism caused major upheavals and
communism spread. But as we review the course of history and look at it from
where we stand today it is human greed and the desire to dominate that seems to
have ultimately triumphed.

Why I thought it relevant to talk about this is
because religion has worked and so has God in holding together the moral fabric
of the society in which we live. They have been symbols of hope and a source of
strength to the multitudes who inhabit this earth. It is not God or Religion
which have contributed to the ills of the society in which we live, it is we
alone with our own perversity and greed who have contributed to the misery that
is existent. As I said earlier all humans are born equal but one has to accept
the fact we are not made equal. This is the truth whether it is acceptable or
not. It is not that all theists are bad or all atheists are good.

So when we stop to ponder as to why this disparity
exists and why we are each made in a different manner, we start searching for a
solution. There are two things that can happen here – one, we believe that we
are a process in the cycle of creation which is endless and so there is no such
thing as final termination or non existence. Two, we believe that there is
nothing beyond death and this is the only life which we have and are conscious
of, for one does not really ‘experience’ death. It is only ‘being and
nothingness’ as per the existentialists. Whatever life we have we should live
it in an authentic manner.

Both viewpoints have their positives. In the first
there is belief in the existence of a God and a hope of a reward for a good
life lived. This definitely is an incentive and a solace that there is a life
beyond death. This would explain man’s quest for immortality ever since he
appeared in this world. The second viewpoint believes that one has to live an
authentic life in order to justify one’s existence and how does one live an
authentic life, only by creating, leaving behind something that will continue
to live after his non existence. There is no God here nor is there a need for
one. But there is one factor that is common to both viewpoints and that is the
state of ‘anguish’.

Life is governed by dualities, we have the
privileged and the under privileged, the strong and the weak, the handsome and
the ugly and the list is endless for every thesis there is an antithesis and
ultimately we have being and nothingness. Very much like electricity, there will
be no current if there is no potential difference, the river does not flow if
there is no gradient, so also life flows on only because of these dualities.

Accepting the existence of differences from
individual to individual and that all of us are not alike as a reality how do
we make this world a better place to live?
This I guess is a very difficult task, not that it has not been tried
over the ages by great reformers. If we can at the individual level try to
uphold the basic tenets of humanity, that of compassion and leading a moral
life, it would be a great contribution to the betterment of human existence.
This is what every religion teaches us. Let us leave aside God for the present,
may be we shall discuss it later.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

A few days ago, much after I had made my posting ‘Why
do I Write?’, I came across George Orwell’s book ‘Why I write’ and naturally I
was thrilled and curious as to what he had to say. I shall summarise here some of the points that he has
made, for it has made me introspect further on what I wrote.

Orwell says that one cannot assess a writer’s motives
without knowing something of his early development. If he escapes from his
early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Orwell
thinks that there are four great motives for writing and they exist in each
writer in varying degrees. They are:

1. Sheer egoism. A desire to seem clever, to be talked
about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown ups who
snubbed you in childhood, etc, etc.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. A perception of beauty in the
external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.
Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be
missed.

3. Historical impulse. A desire to see things as they
are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose. A desire to push the world in a
certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that
should strive after.

He adds that all writers are vain, selfish and lazy,
and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Orwell’s words
are not gospel but he indeed writes good prose. Being himself a writer he says
that writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of
some painful illness and that one would never undertake such a thing if one
were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Though I may to a certain extent agree with the
motives listed out by him, I cannot accept the statement that writing a book is
like a long bout of some painful illness. In fact I feel that it is a cure for
the demons that have been haunting you, to be let out. Writers may be vain but
they are not lazy and who is not selfish. Regarding motives, I still ask my
self why I write. Despite all that I have written it still is a mystery.

I remember I first started writing years ago and I did
it because I wanted to express the feelings that were swelling up inside me.
Certain events in life are life changers and one is not equipped when the
change takes place. My only motive at that time was to place on record what I
felt. There was no question of egoism or any of the other motives listed above.
Maybe now if you ask me I would answer yes that my writing now is a combination
of all those factors. I have two diaries filled with what I wrote years ago,
that was when we all actually wrote on paper with a pen, of course when I am
writing all this now I am on the computer. I wrote in different colours of
inks, green, red, black and purple. My handwriting was very good and I took
care to write down whatever I wanted to properly, so there you can say that the
aesthetic enthusiasm was reflected, but for ego I had not developed enough of
it. These diaries were very private and were never shared with anyone, but now
I go back to them to understand my journey and to put those feelings in a more
intelligible manner, which means that I am getting ready to share them and may
be that is where my ego comes into play. It seeks a tacit approval of its
existence

My first thought was that I should write an
autobiography for I was under a mistaken notion that it is easiest to write
one’s own story. But that’s where my problem lay for I found it very difficult put
down the truth as it is. It requires a lot of courage to accept one’s own
weaknesses and transgressions for you were going to share this and it is not
easy to tear away the mask that one has got used to. Also what you write could
have an impact on other people’s lives. So that’s where deception starts. I
write every night after the others have gone to sleep and I retreat into my
world. I pick up the pieces of my journey one by one and write them down. It is
not a chronicle or a history of my life but it helps me to understand myself
better. Since one has to have a goal, I decided that I shall name it as ‘An
Autobiography of an Ordinary Man’. Whether it shall ever see the light of day
or stay hidden only time can tell. May be Orwell was right when he said that
one of the motives for writing, was to be talked about and to be remembered
after death.

When someone tells you that they have started writing
because they have felt the need to communicate with their innermost feelings, I
believe them. But when they tell me they have torn away what they have written,
for they do not want others to see, I do not understand. It is like taking back
all that you have poured out, so where is the question of unburdening yourself.
I would say keep it to yourself for it is a chronicle of the journey you have
undertaken and that is the reality. How does it matter whether someone sees it?
What do you have to hide? Of course it is very easily said than done for who
would want to disturb their present state of existence and tear away the mask.
My diaries are still with me and they are on my shelf, the pages are now yellow
in colour but I open them, feel them and read what I had written. It is there
and I do not know whether anyone has bothered to read them. It is most
difficult to accept yourself as you are. But I have found that the more I
accept myself the lesser burden I carry. It is as we grow older that we start
shedding of the outer coverings. It is easy now since you have already lived a
large part of your life and come to a realisation that most of the things that
you have lived your life with are no more of any consequence.

Now when I write I do try to take care of the way I
put down my words and also that I get my facts right. So I can say that I have
catered to my aesthetic enthusiasm and my historical impulse. Where is the
question of egoism here? Do we say that all the great works of literature have
been products of the writer’s egotistic impulses? What about all the fantasy
that is woven around books like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and science fiction
novels, leave aside all those books which cater to our own fantasies? May be
they have their own commercial value. But does it not show the fertile
imagination that inhabits the minds of these people?

Orwell says that ‘Animal Farm’ was the first book in
which he tried with full consciousness of what he was doing, to fuse political
purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

Putting aside all the motives that Orwell has
outlined, I would say that writing is a journey in to our inner world and every
writer in the end tries to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is his
own life.